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“There is no money” effect: internal unrest grows due to the freezing of salaries in the Executive and Congress - Infobae
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Efecto “no hay plata”: crece el malestar interno por el congelamiento de los sueldos en el Ejecutivo y en el Congreso
En Diputados prevén cobrar menos que hace dos meses porque se aplicará el descuento del aumento que tuvieron el mes pasado, luego desactivado. El caso del Senado. La trama detrás de la salida de Armando Guibert, hombre clave de Posse
www.infobae.com
March 26, 2024
In Deputies they plan to charge less than two months ago because the discount from the increase they had last month, later deactivated, will be applied. The case of the Senate. The plot behind the departure of Armando Guibert, Posse's key man
By Federico Mayol
Martín Menem and Victoria Villarruel
“We are going to charge less than two months ago, it is delirious, it generates more bad mood. In any case, they should discount it in installments.” The speaker is a deputy with high media exposure who has just checked the provisional settlement of his March salary and who confirmed by system that he must return the increase that they had granted last month to the legislators and that, at the request of the Casa Rosada, Martín Menem and Victoria Villarruel had to undo it with a joint resolution, even despite the resistance, public and private, offered, without success, by the Vice President.
Just over $900,000 is the net salary that, for example, a Peronist deputy will have credited to his account next week, plus another almost $200,000 as “uprooting,” a bonus that those legislators who are from the interior receive. That is, just over $1 million , according to the evidence found by this medium. Well below the salary of around $2.2 million that they received in February with the increase arranged by Menem and Villarruel before backing down, but even a figure much lower than the $1.7 million that, on average, they earned in January.
“To leave without effect, as of January 1, 2024, RC 13/11 signed by Amado Boudou and Julián Domínguez, with regard to the equalization and automatic mobility of the Diet, Representation Expenses and Uprooting received by the deputies and national senators,” signed the president of the Lower House and the Vice President on March 11 after validating the salary update of the legislators along with the increase in legislative staff at the end of February. A measure that Javier Milei ordered to deactivate so as not to alter the construction of his public story of adjustment and “chainsaw.” In full salary liquidation.
According to the economist Matías Surt , a reference for the Civic Coalition, since 2018 the salary of deputies had fallen 55% until January. More than the average drop in registered workers - around 39% - and in line with retirements. Representative Silvia Lospennato , in fact, has a project presented to equalize scales between the powers of the State, and update based on minimum salaries and retirements.
The deputies plan to earn less than two months ago (Maximiliano Luna)
Since it was decided to go back with the increases, the legislators have been very annoyed, and the bad mood has spread in recent days in all the offices of Parliament. Next week, when the salaries are deposited, the topic will once again be a reason for forced conversation indoors. Last week, for example, it was discussed at the Unión por la Patria bloc meeting. The same situation is repeated in the Senate, although until yesterday some of the senators consulted by Infobae assured that they had not yet seen the discount through the system, which allows viewing a prior settlement of assets. “There is talk here that we are going to charge at a discount,” added a PJ senator. They have not yet received any notification.
“We didn't reach 2 million. For every reason I charge around $1.8 million ,” explained a colleague from the UCR.
In Congress they recognize that it is an unfriendly debate . Not only because of the very low esteem that society has for the Legislative Branch, according to most surveys, to which Milei systematically collaborated with his recurring allusion to “the caste.” The zenith of this communication construction was when she referred to Parliament as a “rats' nest . ”
Far from crying out loud, the majority of parliamentarians remained silent. The thing is that, in this context, the leadership recognizes that, at least for now, opposing the President is not free. Quite the opposite. Governor Ignacio Torres can say that in his public affront to the Casa Rosada for the cut in funds he gained popularity, but lost some sympathy among the official electorate.
Pichetto publicly complained about the reversal with the increases (Gustavo Gavotti)
It happened at the time to María Eugenia Vidal when she won the Buenos Aires governorship and found herself with very low salaries: they never dared to give public discussion, in a system that encourages the proliferation of funds and contracts with few controls. In the case of Deputies, only Miguel Ángel Pichetto and Juan Manuel López , among others, complained publicly, and in the Senate Villarruel did formulate an angry reproach that led last week to the explosive interview he gave to TN , with the harvest the approval of the senators.
But the bad mood is not typical of Congress: in the Executive Branch there is also accumulated annoyance over Milei's decision to freeze salary increases for the senior political staff after the setback that meant the reversal of the last salary increase signed by decree at the end last month, around 48% between January and February who had the presidential salary from $4 to $6 million, that of a minister from $3.5 to $5.3 million and that of a Secretary of State from $3.2 to $4 ,8.
The decree was aired by deputy Victoria Tolosa Paz , furious at Menem and Villarruel's retreat. When the situation became public, the president ignored the issue, asked to undo the increase and lowered the order to align the internal discourse. According to the latest study by Opina Argentina, by Facundo Nejamkis, 52% of those consulted did not believe the government when it stated that it was an “involuntary error.”
Days later, he took the opportunity to fire former Secretary of Labor Omar Yasin on television , who assured those around him that he had not been responsible for that decree. The former official, who reported to Minister Sandra Pettovello , had been in the sights of the Chief of Staff, Nicolás Posse, for some time . Pettovello and Posse get along badly.
Nicolás Posse, Chief of Staff
The internal confusion, however, did not stop there. The resignation of Armando Guibert , former Secretary of State Transformation of the Chief of Staff, last week, contributed to more nervousness. Guibert had joined the cabinet at Posse's request. He was an official closely linked to the chief of ministers - in the Libertador and Cerrito offices, before landing at Casa Rosada, he had his own office like Guillermo Francos, the rest occupied shared spaces - who must now resolve his contractual situation in the Banco Nación: until now, it had an ad honorem role.
According to libertarian sources, Posse would have asked Guibert to write a much longer resignation with references to the controversy over the increase in salaries, but the former official refused: he only wrote that he was leaving the position for "personal reasons." Martín Boccacci , from the Public Employment area, who reported directly to him, also left with him . He plans to soon join the Undersecretariat of Housing, headed by Rodrigo Aybar .
Posse's control over management, the cabinet and its ramifications is total. Behind closed doors they accuse Gonzalo Pascual , director of Banco Nación, as his right-hand man in that area. In addition to José “Cochi” Rolandi , he is in charge, to a large extent, of the political negotiations with the blocs allied by the Bases Law together with the Ministry of the Interior.
Armando Guibert
The truth is that, in the case of Congress, legislators' concern has accelerated in recent weeks. “There is a construction that we are all millionaires, and that is not the case ,” a deputy vented. It is true that there is a group that is, but the majority of the deputies and a good part of the senators need their diets to live, with an aggravating factor in the case of legislators who must travel from their provinces, beyond the fact that the Parliament pays for the tickets: they need to rent apartments or reserve hotel rooms.
A senator, for example, confided to this medium that, just for the rent of a modest apartment and the expenses, he must spend about 750 dollars. In an allied bloc in the Lower House, they also highlighted that the hotel rooms in which they sleep when they come to the city of Buenos Aires are increasingly of lower quality.
But there is more: legislators highlighted that there are colleagues who have already warned that they will not be at the commission meetings due to the salary situation. Last week, for example, in the formation of some commissions there were some who already decided not to fly to Buenos Aires. It's the hallway comment. The annoyance is double when the allowances are compared with what advisors of the highest categories or even legislative employees receive: in many cases, with higher salaries.
The last increase by legislators had been last November. In the Lower House it was circulated, in that sense, that Menem himself had notified the block leaders to tell the rest in advance that they would be deducted the last increase. In terms of general bad mood, the next few days promise to be revealing.
